URGENT Please help - BPD ex partner who promised me a future is eloping

[The Dark Lady]

Please help me. Last year I had what I thought was the relationship of a lifetime with a BPD partner. We just clicked instantly and had so much in common. We were friends first really, but it quickly turned into affection and then the most incredible chemistry I’ve ever felt. I was warned by mutual friends about his incredible charm, which was very true, and that he “destroys” women, but I was far too in love by this stage to stop things. When I told him of my concerns over being warned off him he assured me he had changed through years of therapy and meds and that anyway, I “made him want to be a better person” so he never disappointed me.
Anyway, he was very intense in his love from day one, which I knew to be part of his condition, but I was so in love with him too that it was so easy to enjoy it and go along with it. He started asking me to move in with him from only about a month in which I had to ask to postpone, simply because I’d never lived with a boyfriend before and it was very fast, but I absolutely intended to eventually. Then he started saying how he was going to ask me to marry him one day, I just didn’t know when.
About 5 months in I discovered he was seeing his ex behind my back, but I met with him and had a long talk about why he does this in every relationship; he blamed his childhood abuse. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone before and I gave him another chance because of how much I still loved him, on condition we go to a specialist therapist to get to the bottom of this habitual cheating. He agreed to all my conditions and stuck to them and we were truly happier than ever because he seemed much more authentic and eventually he started asking me to have a baby together. I felt it was too soon so although I said yes, I asked to wait a while. Eventually he started pleading me to do it.
I thought I had the most amazing supportive, sweet, loving boyfriend but then I put a foot wrong and he became another person. I will always blame myself for starting the breakdown of our relationship but I honestly didn’t think what I did when drunk and pissed off at him would affect him like it did. Basically, I stupidly took down our relationship status on Facebook, which I INSTANTLY regretted but couldn’t fix. What followed was basically 2 weeks of him punishing me by telling me all the things I needed to change about myself - a lot of which he’d found cute before I did this. I begged for forgiveness and took the hurtful things he said on the chin to save the relationship and, eventually, he did start to thaw towards me a few days before we were due to go on a trip for his friend’s birthday.
When we were away he was back to my sweet, affectionate boyfriend who wanted me to move in and have a baby together. However, and this I’ll never forgive myself for, on the final night away I lost my temper with him big time when he didn’t keep his promise to spend our last evening having a romantic night, just the 2 of us. How I behaved was massively because we’d been socially drinking all day on no food, but I just seemed to blow a fuse and I ended up shouting at him and even throwing things in the room. He was refusing to listen to me and was wrapping his head in a blanket which just made me more angry. The next morning I was terrified and certain he was going to dump me but he was weirdly affectionate. This lasted for 3 days until on day 4 the axe dropped and he told me I had triggered him twice in a few weeks and he wanted a break to think. I begged him to talk things out instead but he was adamant he wanted space. After the break, apart from a few texts, he wouldn’t answer my calls. After that he ghosted me. I found out from a mutual friend just 8 weeks later that some random woman was going around calling herself his fiancée! I didn’t believe it, but then I learnt what I know now. Apparently he lost the house that I would have been living in with him and trying for our baby in became he couldn’t pay the rent anymore after losing his last job months before, so he’d moved in with my replacement almost immediately after they began seeing each other.
What is happening now I can’t believe and just cannot cope with… Just 6 months since he abandoned me after pleading me to settle down together and have a family, he’s eloping to Vegas with my replacement to get married next week! All I can keep saying is “why her and not me?” and constantly blaming myself for ruining things between us when we were the happiest we’d ever been. He was so loving and kind and supportive to me and I blew it and now he’s marrying someone else when it was me he was supposed to be settling down with this year! How can I cope, what can I do? I took an overdose last week because the sadness is unbearable. I want to write something to him before he goes to do this insanity but I don’t know what to say. Please, please help! I’ve never experienced such pain in my life.

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[thankful person]

Hi dark lady,

I am truly sorry for the huge amount of pain you’re in at the moment. Please don’t blame yourself for your very human and realistic reactions to an “impossible” person’s behaviour. BPD is notorious for making people behave like this. Your ex is not flying off into the sunset for “happily ever after”. Their relationship may last but I think it is more likely that it won’t. These relationships only last if the non bpd partner allows themselves to be controlled and emotionally abused in the name of trying to save the relationship. The more you give, the more they will take, until you have nothing left of yourself. Huge amounts of work are needed to turn things around, but it will never be an equal relationship. I am in a lesbian relationship and my bpd wife has birthed our 3 ivf children. The reality is that she is jealous of the children and although her behaviour has improved it is still a major concern for me over their emotional and mental health. My advice is not to contact him. There is nothing that you can say that will change his mind, though he may turn against this woman anyway before they get married. Are you in therapy? There are certain types of people that are attracted to people with bpd. It is not mentally healthy for you. For me, I just desperately needed to feel needed. Please look after yourself, do something nice for yourself. Catch up with old friends, try not to spend the whole time talking about your ex though. Have a serious think whether you want to be bringing up children around an emotionally dysregulated individual, who will always want to be put first (before the children’s needs and sacrificing their mental well-being). My 3 year old tells my wife to calm down. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Watch out for those red flags of control and emotional immaturity if you meet someone else. Honestly I wish you all the best. I know how it is to be so devastated even when you have been treated badly. There is a board on here for helping you to move on, if you are interested. There are many people here who understand what you are going through.

[Notwendy]

Please don't blame yourself- this has nothing to do with you (or the other women who this man has done this too). This is about him getting his needs met by being "good" at being romantic initially- for his own needs. It's not about him caring about the other person, he's good at putting on this role to get his own need met.

You did not "blow it". All you did was care about him and this isn't doing anything wrong- he's the one who is exploiting well meaning women. Consider that, when you were concerned that things were moving too fast- this was your own protective feelings at work. When you got angry at him, it was because of your feelings that were telling you something isn't OK here.

Why her and not you?  Because, she's new, he can replicate the illusion of romance with her. We can't predict the future for any relationship but past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior and I think one can bet that this pattern will repeat with her. I know it feels hurtful right now but you are OK, you truly are.

I have two female friends who were in such types of relationships- both intelligent, independent and capable women. There is nothing wrong with them, and nothing wrong with you. I hope you can believe this.